Jamie Chadwick arrived at Oulton Park hoping to get her season back on track after bad luck at the two previous meetings dropped her down the championship order.
Unfortunately things went wrong from the outset. In practice straightline speed was down with the team initially unsure why. The problem continued for Qualifying and it left her down in eighth on the grid. The team by now suspected an issue with the engine but there was no time to change it and Jamie would have to do race 1 with a car that was down on power compared with her rivals.
Despite the engine issues, she managed to hold position at the start and by the end she actually managed to gain a place to take seventh.
A new engine was fitted to the car overnight but with the race the only other on track running, there would be no way of testing it before the start. With the new power from her engine, Jamie made an excellent start moving up to sixth place. Sadly luck was still not on her side and she was forced wide by a rival dropping her back down the field. Bizarrely, despite the change of engine, her lack of power and straight-line speed issue resurfaced. She kept going though and took a disappointed ninth by the flag.
Jamie was disappointed with the whole weekend;
“I came to Oulton pretty confident that I could get my season back on course. It’s not an easy track for newcomers but I felt pretty comfortable by Saturday Qualifying. I was chasing [Brother] Ollie and, although I was losing a bit of pace I was surprised by how poor my actual times were. It was only in race one on Saturday that the team could guage just how far off the pace I was. The new engine didn’t really help in Sunday’s race, so the car is going to Ginetta to be checked on their Dyno.I’m not where I want to be on the championship so I will be focusing on improvements for Croft.”
Jamie’s brother Ollie also struggled at Oulton with technical issues, losing two potential podiums due to problems with his car.
The next rounds are at the North Yorkshire circuit of Croft over 22nd and 23rd June. By Marc Waller
